Prospective customers wishing to purchase a transaction item generally have one or more purchase routes available to them; purchase in a store, telephone order or online purchase via an online transaction platform (e.g. manufacturer's website). With the proliferation of high speed broadband internet connections many customers are favouring the online purchase route.
In some circumstances, particularly for large value purchases, a customer may initially research a transaction item online before visiting a retail outlet to either complete the transaction or to view the transaction item prior to an online purchase.
In some transaction environments the transaction item may comprise configurable elements and the online transaction platform that is available for the customer to use may allow these various configurable options to be displayed to the customer. For example, where the transaction item is a vehicle then the customer may have the option of exploring various configuration options relating to the vehicle they are interested in, e.g. paint colour and finish, interior trim options, exterior trim options etc. Any changes made while viewing the vehicle on the manufacturers website may be represented via an online rendering of the vehicle that has been selected.
Although the ability to configure aspects of the vehicle may be provided to a customer on the online transaction platform, often the visual experience that is available to them is limited by the display and processing limitations of the device they are viewing the vehicle from. For example, if a customer visits an online vehicle configurator via a mobile device then there are likely to fee processing and display limitations. Even if the customer visits the configurator from a home PC then there may be display limitations that mean that they do not receive a representative experience of the vehicle they are interested in.
Another method, by which vehicle manufacturers may allow prospective customers to experience their range of vehicles is via a motorshow. However, such motorshows are expensive for the manufacturer to exhibit at and the foot-fall of potential customers at such a show only represents a small proportion of the potential market.
It is an aim of the present invention to address disadvantages associated with the display of a transaction item.